


This Way

by thewaterfalcon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaterfalcon/pseuds/thewaterfalcon
Summary: Prompt:"And whad are you going do do?" said Neville, mopping his bleeding nose with his sleeve and frowning at Harry."I've got to find the others," said Harry."Well, I'b going do find dem wid you," said Neville firmly."But Hermione –""We'll dake her wid us," said Neville firmly. "I'll carry her – you're bedder at fighting dem dan I ab –"–Neville and Harry, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (book)Thank you Laf_301for betaing.





	This Way

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SomethingWorthFightingFor](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SomethingWorthFightingFor) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> "And whad are you going do do?" said Neville, mopping his bleeding nose with his sleeve and frowning at Harry.  
> "I've got to find the others," said Harry.  
> "Well, I'b going do find dem wid you," said Neville firmly.  
> "But Hermione –"  
> "We'll dake her wid us," said Neville firmly. "I'll carry her – you're bedder at fighting dem dan I ab –"  
> –Neville and Harry, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (book)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you Laf_301for betaing.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Of that much, Neville was sure. So sure, in fact, that for some inexplicable reason, he was standing and confronting You-Know-Who,  _ He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named _ , oh-Bugger it, doesn’t bloody matter now, does it? Voldemort. Neville Longbottom was openly opposing Voldemort…right to his grotesque and twisted serpentine face. 

 

Because he  _ could _ do that, and damn it all to Hell, he bloody well  _ would  _ do it. 

 

It didn’t matter that he was arguably milliseconds away from being Avada’d into oblivion, or that he could feel the way her eyes pleaded with the back of his skull, begging him to stop, to hide, to hang back...

 

Because it wasn’t supposed to end this way. 

 

And so he continued, so he knew that  _ they  _ would continue, collectively; The DA, the Order, the light, the resistance. Their titles weren’t important. Or maybe they were, but they weren’t to Neville. What was important is that it didn’t end this way. 

 

It wasn’t going to end this way. 

 

Because, if it ended this way, that would mean she had been right all along, and  _ that wouldn’t do _ , Neville thought to himself, as an odd and vastly inappropriately timed desire to smile momentarily washed over him. He refused to grant her ego the inflation, it was large enough as it was. 

 

And so, he stood up. He stood up and he kept fighting. 

 

And miraculously...so did Harry-bloody-Potter, which meant, Neville realised mid-cast of a particularly well-positioned body-bind, that he had been right…

 

It hadn’t ended this way. 

 

He looks for her but it’s she who finds him as they’re thrust once more into pandemonium. 

 

“Well, look who might’ve just been right all along.” Pansy’s voice is tinged with acid, dipped in ice and laced through his heart, “You couldn’t have let me have this one, could you?”

 

“Course not,” he replies, and his voice is a cry that battles for volume over the once again falling debris. Simultaneously, they fling a series of stunning spells haphazardly behind them as they run. He doesn’t remember reaching out his hand for hers, but he’s grateful their fingers are somehow interlocked, together, just as they should be. Just as he needs them to be. 

 

They race through the fight, towards everything and nothing, and they dodge past fear, and sprint by hope, they duck under pain, shield against grief, and turn in the face of the kind of courage that only exists when the very real danger of being snatched from the world of the living is a very real possibility in that moment. 

 

But it wasn’t going to end this way. 

 

What they’re doing is no longer calculated or precise, and despite it being everything they’ve prepared for, it’s nothing like they imagined. With nought but wand and adrenaline, they react, and they fight, and they look the devil in the eye and laugh.

 

Because it wasn’t going to end this way. 

 

He cries as an unexpected spell from an unseen wand throws him against one of the many parts of broken castle.

 

He hears Pansy roar a curse and then, all of a sudden she's kneeling by him, her fists balled in his cardigan, the one she despises so much, and he knows that her tether has long since gone, and she’s hanging on by a small knot she’s made from Merlin knows what part is left of her sheer will. 

 

“That was really stupid,” she gasps and he knows what she means. He always knows what she means.

 

He grits his teeth through the taste of blood and the startlingly poignant pain resonating through his face. It’s secondary to the guilt, however, that spills out of him in droves at the look of anguish present upon her face. “I doh.” 

 

“What the fuck would I have done if it had ended like that?” her words are racked with the sobs that are suddenly crashing against his chest as he struggles to steady her.

 

“I don’t doh. I’m do dorry.”

 

They huddle beneath an assortment of fallen armour and she holds him as she always has; with grit and longing and everything she has and he’s grateful the battle seems to be moving somewhere that isn’t there. It, at least, grants them this moment. 

 

_ It grants them this moment.  _

 

He hangs onto her with all that he is and she grips him with her very existence and he wonders how it happened, wonders what twisted entity of Fate would possibly have entrusted her heart to him, he doesn’t know, but thanks them, or it, anyway.

 

He has no idea how long they’re there, they’re simply there until they aren’t. They’re there until they’re standing, and Pansy grips his hands in hers, tighter than usual, and turns to move again.

 

"And whad are you going do do?"

 

“One of us has got to find out what’s going on, it’s gone quiet.”

 

"Well, I'b going do find dem wid you,"

 

“But your nose, and can you even see through that eye?”

 

“You’re in charge, but I’b dot deaving you - besides, you're bedder at fighting dem dan I ab."

 

She smiles. “We both know that’s a lie.”

 

He manages to smile back in spite of his broken face. “It’s not a lie dat I lub you.”

 

“I lub you, too.”

 

And despite the pain and the permanently stacked against them odds, the ominous silence that Pansy had pointed out and the uncertainty so thick it was almost a tangible thing in the very air they were breathing...

 

It doesn’t end this way.

 

* * *

 

_ “What the fuck, Longbottom?” _

 

_ “I know you don’t want to do this.” _

 

_ “You don’t know shit about me.” _

 

* * *

 

_ “So what? You think because I don’t support him means that I support you?” _

 

_ “No, I just think we support the same thing.” _

 

* * *

 

_ “You need to leave me alone.” _

 

_ “I know you don’t mean that.” _

 

_ “How can you possibly know that?” _

 

_ “Do you...mean it?” _

 

_ “No.” _

 

* * *

 

_ “Don’t cry, Pansy.” _

 

* * *

 

_ “I can’t do it.” _

 

_ “Yes, you-” _

 

_ “ARE YOU DEAF? I CAN’T DO IT ANYMORE!” _

 

* * *

 

_ “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...I just…” _

 

_ “No, you shouldn’t have.” _

 

_ “I’m sorry.” _

 

_ “Longbottom?” _

 

_ “Hmm?” _

 

_ “Kiss me again.” _

 

* * *

 

_ “It’s happening.” _

 

_ “What? When?” _

 

_ “Now. Harry’s back, he says You-Know-Who is coming.” _

 

_ “Oh Gods, it’s going to end.” _

 

_ “It is not going to end!” _

 

_ “It’s going to end this way!” _

 

_ “You’re wrong.” _

 

_ “I hope so.” _

 

* * *

 

_ “I love you.” _

 

_ “I love you.” _

 

* * *

 

It ends in strained cheers through grief-filled tears. It ends, Neville knows, because it has to. 

 

He blinks through disbelief and relief and everything he holds dear, and they stick closer, they whisper shared doubts and stoic, still present fears and gasp at the rising count of dead bodies and swallow, silently, at the sight of the anguish present on the faces of the ones closest to those lost. 

 

He allows her to steer them towards a bench and doesn’t stir when she attempts to heal his injured face.

 

He allows her to take her turn at being the strength until she needs him to release her and reverse the role. And then he allows her to take her turn again, and again, until all he knows, and has, is the way the tips of her fingers grip his arms as she sobs and shakes and she seems so frail to him, so torn apart, so utterly  _ un- _ Pansy-ish, that it finally hits him that they’ve just lived through a war. 

 

* * *

 

 

It ends  _ this  _ way. 

 

It ends with survival. With reunion and mourning and explanations and the way that Pansy clings to him through the night.

 

It ends with his hands grazing down her bare back before his fingertips brush through her hair. His lips are touching her own and then tracing down her neck, with his teeth gently nipping her breasts.

 

It ends with her moaning and tightly grasping his hair as he moves against her. Her want of him is too great to postpone, too much right now to hold off in favour of teasing. 

 

It ends with the desperation in their touch as he enters her, with the way he takes her, hard, and the way she breathily begs for more. 

 

It ends, as is the case with most things, with a climax.

 

He doesn’t want to let her go. He doesn’t want to let her go _ever_ again. 

 

So he doesn’t.

 

He takes her and loves her and finishes putting together all the broken parts of her that he started all those months ago. 

 

He  _ doesn’t  _ let her go. 

 

It ends his way...

 

...their way. 

 

**It ends this way.**


End file.
